


Here's to Evil Skanks

by masked



Series: Through it All We're Still Alive [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bela's past, Crossroads Deals & Demons, Gen, Hellhounds, Hopeful Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 04:28:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15941795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masked/pseuds/masked
Summary: Bela Talbot looks for a way to break her crossroad deal before her time is up.





	Here's to Evil Skanks

**Author's Note:**

> **trigger warning:** there's a part where Bela self-harms for a spell. Specifically, she cuts her palm once.
> 
> written for the [supernatural creations challenge](https://supernaturalcreationschallenge.tumblr.com/) on tumblr! 
> 
> my prompt was "poppy" and "forsaken". poppies are usually associated with remembrance for those who fell in battle, but it’s also associated with peaceful sleep, recovery, and resurrection. I tried to run with both in mind!

The first growl warns her that she doesn’t have much time left.

It’s mid-afternoon, a quiet afternoon, when she hears it. She’s expected it but it still catches her off-guard as the sound travels from beyond her apartment balcony and into her living room where she’s searching for a solution. She freezes with her gun in her hands and she looks out the balcony to find nothing there. Nothing but a set of dried up paw prints and the smell of rotting meat lingering in the air.

Bela Talbot draws a shaky breath and sits back down in front of her list of contacts to try the next name.

* * *

She pulls up names of all kinds from every continent but hellhounds and demon deals are not something that can be dispelled easily. It’s a common enough problem that she finds enough stories and tried methods. So far, she hasn’t found any account about those who have succeeded.

With every similar case she finds out it feels like another step backwards, and with every solution that she tries and fails is one less possibility to save herself. Each day her hope dwindles and the voice that tells her that maybe she deserves this becomes louder and louder until it’s almost loud enough to drown out the whines and scratches at her door every night.

Sound can be blocked out. Hope can be replenished. Nothing is impossible, and if she lives in a world where fourteen year old girls can make deals with demons then she will create her own world where they can claw themselves out of it.

Even if the rest of the world forgets and forsakes her, she will not abandon herself.

* * *

Her visit to an infamous witch leads her to yet another dead end. She only has a few more days at best, and right now she has one other lead left. The last desperate attempt to directly contact the one that holds all crossroad deals—the method that she was hoping would never have to be considered. She’s sick of dealing her life away as the price to keep going like it’s just another artifact she can trade away.

“Thank you for trying,” she says to the witch Clea, even though the effort to come all the way here had been futile.

Clea is quiet, contemplative as she watches Bela—she’s had to learn the details of Bela’s deal in order for them to try her spell. “Wait.” She looks around as if someone might be listening in even though they’re in the private quarter of her shop. “I have one more idea.”

Clea quickly scribbles out a name and an address onto a small piece of paper. “Don’t tell anyone I told you this,” she says in low quick hushes. “The Coven’s made sure nobody finds out about her, but she’s the only one I can think of that has just enough juice to help you.” She rips the paper out and hands it to Bela.

Bela stares at the yellow piece of folded paper. What price would she pay for this?

Clea understands. “Think of it as a parting gift,” she offers.

Bela raises her eyebrows.

Clea gives her a tight-lipped smile. “Alright. So she might not be the most safe option. Out of the pan and into the fire sort of deal if you’re not cautious. But take it anyway,” she says. “It’s your choice what you do with it.”

She’s right.

* * *

She doesn’t finds her at the address given, but the piece of paper gives enough information for her to track the witch down to a high-end hotel room where she’s sipping on a glass of champagne that’s been plucked out of a charmed bellboy’s hand.

“Oh?” the witch says, perfectly arched eyebrows raised. “I didn’t call for room service, dear.”

“I’m here to make you an offer,” replies Bela.

The witch regards this for only a second before she laughs. She crosses her arms together, shifting her bright curled red hair against her black dress. “What are you talking about?”

“You break my demon deal and I break you out of those nasty bindings. The Grand Coven, wasn’t it?”

Rowena’s smile slips away. Bela offers a smile in return.

Rowena turns her nose up haughtily. “You’re no witch. How do you intend to do that, exactly?”

“I can’t break the spell for you. But you will after you help me.”

Bela slides into the room and takes out the Colt. Rowena walks back with her hands raised for a spell, only to blink her long lashes in surprise when Bela unloads all the bullets into her other hand and holds both up in the air to show that she means no harm.

“This is the Colt. Proof that I… procure unique items for select clienteles,” she says. “And I can obtain the Black Grimoire for you.”

Rowena eyes her over, half curiosity and half caution. The Colt is magical enough that nobody would be able to deny its authenticity within its presence. 

The corners of Rowena’s lips turn upwards. “Alright, you certainly got my attention. Let’s hear it.”

Bela doesn’t relax, exactly. Maybe it’s because Rowena hasn’t said yet that she can’t do it or it’s impossible to achieve, or maybe it’s something about how absolute the witch wears her confidence that is familiar.

She doesn’t relax. But for the first time in a long time, she’s not afraid.

* * *

“Deal,” says Rowena, “is just another fancy word for ‘promise’. And demons are vastly famous for keeping _those_ straight, aren’t they?”

Rowena circles around Bela’s kneeled position on the floor, drizzling her magical concoction into a circle as she goes. The air is choke full of scents of flora and herbs and Bela struggles to stay still. “They kept their end of the deal.”

“Oh, _sure_. They’d make anything come true for you as long as it’s convenient for them in the end.” Rowena lights the candles up one by one. The door which she’s enforced for this final part of the spell rattles under the weight of the hellhound in the hallway. Bela grips onto the ceremonial knife tighter.

“Alright.” Rowena settles the bowl down with a definite _clank_. “Get ready.”

Bela’s practiced the incantation every waking moment ever since Rowena first handed it to her. In her sleep, in her dreams, she’s practiced until she could feel her throat scratched and bloodied and still she kept going, practiced until every word in the spell could be enunciated even with her tongue ripped out.

She says them now along with Rowena’s own incantation and against the cacophony outside the door, not blinking as the circling figure showers her with petals of poppies into the circle and she slices open her palm, with one, two, three drops of blood that travels down her forearm and onto her kneeled thighs. Rowena’s eyes glow a faint purple in the dancing flames and the circle underneath Bela starts to glow purple as well and there’s a roaring in her ears that becomes louder and louder until it smothers out Rowena’s voice and her own voice and the howls and still Bela continues to chant even as the light blinds her and Rowena’s hand signals her, and Bela, she takes the knife in her hand and coats it with her blood and cuts a harsh jagged line across the contract that’s bound and haunted her for the past ten years.

There’s silence.

Bela blinks the tears out of her eyes and the biting sting of the knife wound on her palm is easy enough to ignore in lieu of understanding the silence for what it is. She looks at the mark she’s made on the floor of this motel, looks as the circle of ripped up poppy petals fade away beneath her as her contract with the crossroad demon too fade away, looks up to Rowena who smiles triumphantly, and looks to the door. There’s silence.

Bela holds her breath. She waits. She stares and stares, immobile where she sits, afraid that any moment the door will rattle again.

It doesn’t.

Rowena helps as Bela gets up with her shaky legs. For once, she doesn’t need to hide away and instead she stands tall even with every muscle of her body protests against the action. It’s broken. Gone.

She did it.

The thought reduces her into tears. Not little droplets of tears that roll down silently but the full waterworks with tears and snot and blood smeared across her cheeks while she holds her face and wails towards the sky with her trembling lips, primal and violent and free.

Finally. Finally.

* * *

It takes her days, weeks, to let it settle in that the deal is truly broken. She still has nightmares but the concoctions Rowena makes helps her sleep, and her memories aren’t wiped free but she _is_ her own and that alone is enough.

The day she acquires the Black Grimoire, Bela wonders what Rowena could do with it if she has enough power to break someone out of their demon deal in her current state.

She also decides that she doesn’t care if Rowena eats up the rest of the world with the power she reclaims away from the people who took it from her in the first place.

Rowena clutches the book in her embrace as Bela hands it over and it is this sight that has Bela slide her personal number across the table to Rowena along with the grimoire.

“If you ever want to partner up again,” Bela says.

“Oh, I won’t need that once I get my powers back.” She takes the number all the same, tucking it away safely.

Bela now has no real reason to go back to stealing magical artifacts in the hopes of finding one that might be able to help her break the contract, and she’s been so focused on getting out that she hasn’t thought about what to do after. She has all the time in the world to decide, in any case.

Once Rowena makes sure the spell she needs is in the grimoire, she says, “Very impressive. How did you find it, exactly?”

“The Men of Letters aren’t a very capable bunch,” Bela says, “but even they wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to grab a powerful artifact away from a family of witches. I just tipped them off and grabbed it from them once they had it.” Bela swirls the amber gold champagne in her glass. “You may have heard of them? The Loughlins family.”

Rowena stares at her in astonishment for a second which transforms into a wicked smile, the very image of the evil witch in every story. “Oh, you are good.” She raises her glass of champagne and toasts, “Here’s to us.”

Bela laughs, sure that the wicked smile is mirrored on her own face, and toasts with her.


End file.
